4/30/12

The Stars Grow Dimmer

"I look at tomorrow
with one eye,

while keeping my other eye on yesterday."

- The
Real Folks Blues (OST Cowboy Bebop)

The last
time I perused the pages of a Patrick Quentin novel, a solo effort from Richard
Webb entitled Murder at Cambridge (1933), I was confronted with a fiasco
and began to wonder if this tangle of pennames had another detective novel to
their credit that reflected the same ingenuity showcased in Death and the Maiden (1939) and Black Widow (1952) – with the former being one
of my dozen favorite mysteries.

I sort of
ended up abandoning Patrick Quentin for a while until reading a review of Cottage Sinister (1931), a combined project from the tandem of Richard Webb and
Martha Kelley, published under the byline "Q. Patrick," on MysteryFile.Com and
immediately spotted a recommendation in the comment section from John Norris
for two of Hugh Wheeler's unaccompanied outings under their shared penname. One
of the titles was Black Widow, praised on here for flaunting a plot that
moves with the same meticulous precession as the innards of a Swiss watch,
while the other, Suspicious Circumstances (1957), was an unfamiliar
title for me, however, there was a copy buried somewhere in the caverns of my
to-be-read pile – so guess what I dug out for today's review?

Suspicious
Circumstances opens
with our narrator, Nicholas "Nickie" Rood, teenage son of the world famous
actress Anny Rood and aspiring novelist living in Paris, receiving a telegram
from his mother with an urgent plea to return home post-haste. Nickie feels
very little for a trip back home, but does manage to struggle himself free from
the loving embrace of his Monique and flies home for what turns out to be a
funeral – and it appears as if his mother had more of a hand in it than just lending one to help with
the preparations of the service. The legend that is Anny Rood, "of the Great
Swooping Eyes and the Bone Structure," is a strong and well characterized
woman, whose almost revoltingly nice and would go to the limit to help others, but the subtle imperfections that stud her personality humanizes
her and successfully prevented the birth of another Mary Sue.

One of
her schemes that could be filed away under "Acts of Neighborly Love," are her
indefatigable attempts to mend the broken marriage between two of her friends,
famous independent producer-director and her not-so-secretly admirer Ronald
Light and his washed-up actress-wife Norma Delanay, even using her charms to
maneuver Ronald into giving Norma the leading role in a sex-million-dollar
Cinematic-scope spectacle based on the life of Ninon de Lenclos. It's one of
those roles women would kill for and Anny's convinced that the newfound success
that will stalk Norma upon the release of this new picture will get her off the
booze and back with Ronald, but her friendly intrusions are resented and
everything explodes in her face – especially when Norma's fading star turns
into a falling one as she plummets down a flight of stairs. Oh, and Anny had
just agreed to take over the role of Ninon.

Serial Mom: the skeleton in her own closet

It's
impossible to describe any further events in the book without revealing too
much because the plots is an accumulation of problems for Anny Rood and her
entourage, which is the story's biggest selling point for the simple reason that you are never
quite sure what kind of detective story you are reading until you have reached
the solution. Is it an inverted-mystery, of sorts, in which sweet, innocent
Anny Rood is a predecessor of Serial Mom (1994) or a diabolical parody revealing the unfortunate deaths to be nothing more than mere accidents and
the suspicion of murder nothing more than the product
over an overactive imagination of a teenage boy – encouraged by rivalries one
should expect in a industry like Hollywood films. By the way, I thought
Nickie was a very likeable narrator and used a line from Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven” and
a scene from James' Lost Horizon (1933) to describe two of the
characters after certain events. Never thought I would come across a reference
to that novel in a mystery. Loved it!

Anyway,
eventually, I did stumble to the correct solution, although it was more
instinctively rather than deductively, but it was good one even if it was not
in the same league as Death and the Maiden or Black Widow. The
revelation of the murderers identity comes through a signed confession, which
is never a satisfying device, but somewhat acceptable here because the story
lacked a detective figure. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. But not as a good as some
of their other work.

Something
ironic occurred to me while reading this book. It dawned on me that this is the
kind of story that Ellery Queen tried to write during their
Wrightsville/Hollywood period, when they were aiming for more realism in their
novels, but even a greater emphasis on character could, IMHO, not reveal that
they were as detach from reality as their first period books – and ditching
reversed rooms, cut-off mountain top mansions and decapitated corpses nailed to
road signs does not necessarily make a story any more realistic. However, for all
the claims made against Ellery Queen for their lack of realism it's their name
that's still (somewhat) being remembered and their books are still being
read while only a few of us possess eyes that won't glaze over when they check
the pennames Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge at us.

It really
makes you wonder how aware some of the genre's detractors are of its history as
it's really easy to point to a few of Christie's village mysteries/closed-circle
of suspects novels and some of her fellow Crime Queens to conjure up a
stereotypical image of a 1930s whodunit. Why always point to the usual suspects
when there are so many wonderful examples of good detective fiction that should
get a stamp of approval from modern critics if characterization and innovation
actually means as much as they say it does.

GAD never explored sexual
relationships in-depth? What about Peter and Iris Duluth? Their relation is
very explicitly depicted over a number of books and they even met at a sanatorium
when they were complete wrecks. For Carr's sake, how modern do you want it to
get? GAD emphasizes plot over characters? Pick up a Pat McGerr novel and marvel
at how the characters dictate every twist and turn the plot takes. GAD had no
eye for the lower/working classes? Go talk with Curt Evans and he will tell you about a
man who penned a staggering amount of detective novels named John Rhode. You
probably never heard of him let alone read one of his books, which is why we
take you as serious as an Alzheimer patient lecturing on the nonverbal communication
in silent films. Or better yet, read "The Adventure of the Lost Men," a radio
play penned during the 1940s for The Adventures of Ellery Queen, in which the
setting is a community of homeless people.

Well, that’s
enough ranting and raving against windmills for one day. Thanks for suffering,
once again, through one of my vague rambles. :)

2 comments:

This is the kind of suspense crime fiction I really enjoy when I feel inundated with the usual whodunits. I'm glad it appealed to you. It was brought to my attention by someone I met at Bouchercon last year. We were talking about vintage novels that have been out of print for decades and she mentioned a writer she hoped I heard of: "Patrick Quentin?" "Of course I have!" I replied. She raved about this book and told me that Patrick Quentin was one of the most popular mystery writers in Norway when she was growing up.

I wish I’ve read more of the Quentin/Q.Patrick books myself. I’d like to be able to say exactly why their detective fiction was never as popular or well known as Ellery Queen’s. I know there’s a large amount of variability in their books, but if you want “realism” in your detective fiction, the Quentin/Q.Patrick books can’t be beat, as far as I can tell from the ones I have read.

Are they better than the EQ books in the latter’s middle and later period, when the two cousins were going with the times and trying to make their books more “real” than the pure puzzle novels they were writing in the 30s? Based on the evidence I’ve read with my own eyes, I’m hesitating but I think I might have to say yes.

The Usual Suspect

An Elementary Observation

Welcome to the niche corner, dedicated to the great detective stories of yore and their neo-classical descendants.

Witnesses' Statements

"It's my job to fan the fires of your imagination with tales of doom and gloom; right now I have another chilling tale for you. A tale of danger and mystery..."- Vincent Price (Grandmaster of the Macabre)."The detectives who explain miracles, even more than their colleagues who clarify more secular matters, play the Promethean role of asserting man's intellect and inventiveness even against the Gods."- Anthony Boucher.

"I like my murders to be frequent, gory, and grotesque. I like some vividness of colour and imagination flashing out of my plot, since I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened. I do not care to hear the hum of everyday life; I much prefer to hear the chuckle of the great Hanaud or the deadly bells of Fenchurch St Paul."- Dr. Gideon Fell (telling it like it is since 1933).